St. Bruno

Feast Day:
Roman Rite Calendar - 10/06

Patron Of:
Possesed People, Ruthenia

Memorial
6 October

Profile
Educated in Paris and Rheims, France. Ordained c.1055. Taught theology; one of his students later became Blessed Pope Urban II. Presided over the cathedral school at Rheims from 1057 to 1075. Criticized the worldliness he saw in his fellow clergy. He opposed Manasses, Archbishop of Rheims, because of his laxity and mismanagement. Chancellor of the archdiocese of Rheims. Following a vision he received of a secluded hermitage where he could spend his life becoming closer to God, he retired to a mountain near Chartreuse in Dauphiny in 1084 and with the help of Saint Hugh of Grenoble, he founded what became the first house of the Carthusian Order; he and his brothers supported themselves as manuscript copyists. Assistant to Pope Urban II in 1090, and supported his efforts at reform. Retiring from public life, he and his companions built a hermitage at Torre, where, 1095, the monastery of Saint Stephen was built. Bruno combined in the religious life the eremetical and the cenobitic; his learning is apparent from his scriptural commentaries.

Born
1030 at Cologne, Germany

Died
1101 at Torre, Calabria, Italy of natural causes; buried in the church of Saint Stephen at Torre

Canonized
1623

Patronage
possessed people
Ruthenia

Representation

* branch
* chalice
* cross in hand
* death’s head
* man holding a book and being illuminated by a ray of light
* skull
* star